Saxophone Forum

A few thoughts on dealing with repair shops.

Every so often there's a post about some horror story dealing with a repair shop. Some shops truly suck (I've experienced a couple of those), but quite often the problems seem to arise from poor communication. Those problems can be largely alleviated by formalizing the process. Whenever you leave your horn with a shop, secure a copy of a signed agreement that identifies, at the very least, the horn by serial number, the work to be performed, the cost, and the timeframe in which the work is to be performed. Any change to the terms of the original agreement should also be formalized by written agreement. Maybe that sort of contract/change order procedure looks like a hassle, but it's a lot less of a hassle than the disputes that usually seem to start with "But you told me....."

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Re: A few thoughts on dealing with repair shops.

Ive never known a repair shop that works that way.

If a shop really spent that much time itemizing what would be done and then calling any time they found something new, I bet they would have to raise prices and they would have to charge you just for looking without fixing anything.

So, i figure all you can really do is base it on others opinions and if you dont get what you think you should, tell your friends and dont go back. That should eventually work out with the bad ones looosing business and going out of business. of course the parents of most students dont have any way of checking it out.

Re: A few thoughts on dealing with repair shops.

The issue isn't necessarily weeding out the bad shops, although that is important too. The issue is keeping bad situations from developing despite everyone's best intentions. It would seem prudent for repair shops to adopt those procedures for their own protection as well as the customer's. They don't need to have their reputations sullied because of bad situations that arise from poor communication. Those are often situations where the fault is distributed between the shop and the customer.

There's no real reason instrument repair shops can't use the same best practices that are common to auto repair shops. Most common repair items aren't that difficult to diagnose at the outset. If there's a severe issue with build quality, wear, or previous work, those tend to become obvious pretty quickly. There's often a choice to be made - do it the best way or do it the get by way. The best way might not fit the customer's budget and they need to be kept in the loop.

Customer experiences for any given repair shop are often all over the place. It's situational - type of work, customer's budget, time constraints, etc. It's important to get all of that out into the open at the outset.